


A Certain Blindness

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Reign of Fire (2002)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-25
Updated: 2003-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Pouncer</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Certain Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pouncer

 

 

A Certain Blindness

Creedy realizes after knowing him only two days that Quinn can barely recognize him from a distance. Close up, Quinn still has to concentrate to make out Creedy's features with a desperate, self-imposed focus. It is because of this that Quinn tells him, on a calm day with time for stories, who he is. 

"And I'm still alive," Quinn finishes. 

Creedy puts one hand on Quinn's thin shoulder, not knowing how firm the muscle there will become years into the future. The world is bathed in apocalyptic light; even the night is red, filled with the stench of fire and ash. They don't have time to be children, but they don't have the experience to be men. What they know is how to run. It's lucky, Creedy thinks, that they've found each other. They are very different but they give one another someone else to fight for. 

They fall into familiar routines. Habit helps them to survive. When at last too many wakeful hours have passed, they admit to their exhaustion and curl around one another to sleep. Then there is no question that the warmth is necessary, even when the air is stifling hot. Creedy clings to Quinn to feel alive, and Quinn clings to Creedy to ward off nightmares he doesn't have time for. 

"On that day," Quinn explains in a helpless moment, "I thought the letter I carried with me _mattered_." 

Moments later Quinn has grabbed Creedy's hand and they are running, running, running, as shadows wheel above them, cast from the cloud-bruised sky. 

Their first kiss comes not more than an hour later, when they think they are going to die. They hold onto one another and hear the fire first, before they smell it. Long heartbeat moments pass and suddenly they can feel it, too, heavy in the air. Their lips are desperate as they struggle not to cry. Don't they know they have to be strong now? Quinn wonders. _Don't we know we don't have time?_ But the world is ending, he tells himself. The world is burning and there's too much of a chance it won't be the crucible his dreams beg it to be. 

They have no time to think about it. They may never have any more time at all. 

They kiss. 

Afterwards they hold each others faces in burnt, bandaged hands, flushed from the flames, buried beneath wreckage and choking on soot. 

Days pass in this way. Quinn does not understand why they survive. They stay in one place until it is burned down, and when they travel they do not stop to bury the dead. 

"Keep both eyes on the road," Quinn determines. Three miles on and it changes to, "Keep your eyes on the sky. I'll keep my eyes on the road." 

After a month and they think to take turns. When Creedy sleeps he dares to sleep with his head on Quinn's thigh, and Quinn learns to give him more time than is his fair share. Because of this Quinn learns that it is possible to train yourself out of needing enough sleep. At first, he keeps himself awake by knotting his fingers in Creedy's hair and reminding himself he must onto him. When he has taught himself he will not lose Creedy, he uses the extra time in the night to train his eyes. Focus, he tells them, staring at the sky. Focus. 

He works for the day when Creedy no longer has to be his eyes and things can at last be equal between them. 

Still, he finds one day he is a man with two keen eyes but the world around him has become too gray, too charred, and the clouds too unforgiving. He has lost the chance to see the stars again. 

Soon they have women. Of course they have women. After the worst is over theirs is a post-apocalyptic world, apocalyptic desperation churning within them no longer. Their instincts hinge upon procreation. 

Quinn's woman is burned; Creedy's is crushed beneath falling debris two months later. 

"Too much time has passed," Quinn says. It is the first night they can mourn the two deaths, and they do so together, separate from their rag-tag companions. "We can't be lucky forever." 

Their second kiss comes past midnight, though neither of them know. Quinn lost his watch half a year ago. Quinn tangles his fingers in Creedy's hair, which is longer now, and easier to hold onto. 

Afterwards Creedy says, not for the first time, not for the last, "You're my best friend, Quinn. You were meant to come out of this alive." Creedy's brogue is familiar in the darkness. These are the constants, Quinn thinks, Creedy's voice and Creedy's hand in his own and Creedy's body by his side. 

"Was I?" Quinn asks. "We won't know until we know." 

"And when will tha' be?" Creedy whispers. 

"I don't know," Quinn admits. "I don't know." 

It never once occurs to Quinn that Creedy won't be there by his side; that Creedy is not meant to survive with him. Of all the things Quinn fears he doesn't fear losing Creedy. Perhaps he has grown too accustomed to him and is unable to understand that Creedy isn't a part of him. That he has fooled himself into thinking Creedy is a constant in a world without constants. 

Their third kiss knows none of this. It isn't innocent and it isn't desperate. Instead, it is something gloriously in-between in this time only of drastic measures. They are just two young men touching each other in moments of weakness, with quick, breathless sounds and a slow rhythm of their hips. 

Creedy, who is at heart a tender man, kisses both of Quinn's eyelids, remembering the time they spent together, being reborn together into this unfathomable world. No longer a blind boy staggering through the wrecked streets, Quinn is a broad-shouldered man with warm, soft lips. 

Quinn is Creedy's broad-shouldered man with warm, soft lips. 

And Creedy never means to die. 

 


End file.
